Deeplinks Blog posts about Patents

This week marks the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. In Alice, the court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a generic computer. When the case was decided, we wrote that it would be a few years until we knew its true impact. Two years in, we can say that while Alice has not solved all problems with software patents, it has given productive companies a valuable tool for fighting back against patent trolls. And while it has been bad for the trolls, there’s little reason to think the Alice decision harmed real software companies.

This month features not only a stupid patent, but also a stupid trademark to go along with it.

My Health, Inc. is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 6,612,985, which is entitled “Method and system for monitoring and treating a patient.” My Health also holds a trademark in the term “My Health.” My Health claims that it is “the only person or entity entitled to use... ‘My Health’ in commerce.”

Jason Cugle, if all goes well, will soon be able to continue to operate his mail-order business without fear of a spurious patent lawsuit. With any luck, so will thousands of other small businesses that are often targeted by one of the worst patent trolls around.

Jason runs Triple7Vaping.com, a small Maryland business that sells products online and ships them across the country. Jason doesn’t run a high-tech operation: a customer orders a product, Jason manually composes an email letting that customer know the order had shipped, and packages are then sent out via tracked USPS mail.

Court Orders Blue Spike to Explain Why It's Keeping the Public in the Dark

In a victory for the First Amendment and public access to court proceedings, a magistrate judge ruled in favor of EFF’s motion to unseal documents in a patent case in the Eastern District of Texas. This means that the patent owner in that case, Blue Spike, will no longer be able to shield from the public its arguments about how the defendant infringes its patents. Also, the court has indicated that it will publish public versions of important rulings that, until now, had been completely hidden from the public.